plangent

English edit

WOTD – 15 May 2012

From Latin plangēns, present participle of plangō (“I beat; I lament”).

plangent (comparative more plangent, superlative most plangent)

Having a loud, mournful sound.
- 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, “chapter 1”, in The Story of a Lie:
  [S]how him a refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice […] and his mind was instantaneously awakened.
- 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth (Duckworth hardback), page 49:
  Since mid-day their plangent, disquieting cries had foretold its approach.
- 2013 Sept. 22, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, “Music Review: A Middle East Mourned and Celebrated in Suites”, in New York Times‎^[1]:
  In the lament about the massacre — the work’s second movement — he entered a more urgent register in the high reaches of the cello, but the sense of grief was more plangent than raw, devoid of any real outrage.
(rare) Beating, dashing, as waves.
- 1922, Clark Ashton Smith, Desire of Vastness:
  What central sea with plume-plucked midnight strewn,
  Plangent to what enormous plenilune
  That lifts in silence, hinderless and stark?

having a loud mournful sound

plangent